Enough is enough..

The old saw about coming home late to one's wife from a night out with the boys, a little tipsy, and no plausible excuse for your absence applies here: butrst through the door and, with a panic-stricken expression on your face, exclaim, "Don't pay the ransom, I escaped!"

Well, a fortnight of work responsibilities, a severe bout with the flu, and another severe bout with a USAF Auxiliary squadron commander who is possibly one of the poorest leaders I have worked for in my professional career, and just a general malaise have conspired to thwart any creativity of late.

Some time, I will go into the more sordid aspects of the squadron commander, suffice to say that the USAFA (a.k.a., Civil Air Patrol) is a volunteer endeavor and certain things can slide when one of the volunteers has been down with a 102 degree, a hacking cough, and all manner of gastric disturbances for five days.

Hell, even my boss at work -- where I do get paid for my efforts -- sent me home Friday with the admonition I was to dwell between the covers and he did not want to lay eyes on me until next Tuesday. A study in contrasts, these two men and I am one is overseeing the activities that earns me my daily crust and not the other.

O.K., so I'll let it go for now, but some time aske me about the "bring me a rock" school of management theory.

So after that great, whimpering preamble, there's nothing really to report on the National scene except that the POSOTUS is up to his usual stunts: holding that 7-hour comedy gold roast with the Republicans, only to find that his cheap dramatics are having less of an effect on swaying the American public than it did last Summer..and Fall..and Winter..

..and probably only slightly more than it will this Spring, just two weeks away.

Still wracked with some dizziness and remnants of fever, I leap from topic to topic like someone afflicted with Tourette's syndrome. But I gotta mention one thing and then I am hitting the sack with some O.J. and two APCs. 

During my illness, I downloaded a ton of the Hughniverse stuff to my iPod and listened to Hugh Hewitt's show all this past week. Now, I like Hugh, but sometimes he get's to stuffy, staid, and too much like an old guy who tries to hang with the young folks, overly hip, using terms that, I am sure make him an embarrassment to the younger crowd.

Not exactly 23-skiddoo and Oh, you kid! but you get the idea. And, to be perfectly clear, I am more aged than Hewitt. Hell, I am more aged than most everybody. And my attempt at youthful argot is an order of magnitude greater that Hewitt. And..he some times gets the bit between the teeth, gets one up in his wheel-house, and it's bye-bye, Mr Spalding! Also, while Hugh is somewhat contrived, he is no mewling, terminally self-referential Bill O'Reilly. I put that loser (O'Reilly) in my rear view about a dozen posts ago.

I just wish Hewitt would stop passing off some of his sponsors as show-segments in a broadcast hour already straining so much under commercial loads, it is about to break. Hugh's shows have more spots than 101 Dalmations.

But this week, he's cavorting around the Caribbean with some of his and has given the reins to Guy Benson and the lovely and talented Mary Katherine Ham and they did 15 hours of must-have commentary! Guy started off by dissecting every inane utterance of Pelosi's pathetic bleats about how the health car bill is so necessary and how they were fighting for the public's rights and best interests.

Anyway, I guess the point in all this blather is two-fold. One, Guy and Mary Katherine are good; they have that sharp, fresh, crispness to their delivery comes from their youthful exuberance and superior intellect. Their wit is this school-yard impudence backed by keen minds (notwithstanding Benson's matriculation from the same school that educated the questionable Rod Blagojevich) untrammeled by the plodding deliberation of additional years.

Were both of these young people major league pitching talent, it is fair to say one can imagine fast balls that hop, curve balls that drop off tables, and change-ups that confound, all delivered with effortless grace.

In all fairness, Hewitt is, if nothing, a master of assembling such talent and packaging for public consumption. He regularly corrals the incomparable Mark Steyn, Fred Barnes, and the aforementioned duo. But the mere tidbits he throws out during the commercial-laden segments of his daily show leave the audience screaming for more.

This is Hewitt's province, I suppose, because he has made his bones, taken the risks, rolled the bones and come up a winner. But still, I kind of wish he would not walk on Mr Benson, Ms Ham, and Mr Steyn. Hearing these peoples' riffs unsplattered with his incessant injections. Hugh should also throttle back on the jibes as well. from a recent blog entry:

"Many thanks to Guy Benson and Mary Katharine Ham for filling in for me this past week, and to Duane and Adam for keeping the duo from going off the rails.  My e-mails tell me that both Ham and Benson have long and distinguished careers ahead of them."

In light of my listening and re-listening to those segments on my iPod, I consider the above patronizing and unfunny. Like the Blagojevich jokes, this sort of thing gets old. And, I guess that is what differentiates Hewitt from Benson and Ham.

But then again, when I come down from my NyQuil high and shrug off the mantle of this debilitating illness, I guess I'll just revert to just a normal, grumpy old man.